Lux­or

Drift­ing on the banks of the Nile in the epony­mous city, Lux­or revolves around Hana (Andrea Rise­bor­ough), a mys­te­ri­ous trav­eller return­ing after years away. At first she’s engulfed: a guest check­ing into a high-ceilinged hotel; a fig­ure in light cot­ton lost in front of a mur­al of excit­ed Egypt­ian fig­ures; a lon­er fol­low­ing an eager hud­dle of tourists being guid­ed around some temples.

Neat title cards that resem­ble hotel sta­tionery are used as chap­ter mark­ers in the film, not just men­tion­ing places but also con­ver­sa­tions, book­mark­ing mem­o­ries in the mak­ing. They chart Hana’s pas­sage through this hol­i­day – not just redis­cov­er­ing the city, but retrac­ing the steps of her younger self. Only when Hana is alone in the tem­ples, where faint whis­pers speak to her through the ancient stone, is she tru­ly in tune with her sur­round­ings. The lay­ers of time, the weight of those who came before and carved their sto­ries into the land­scape, res­onate with her unspo­ken mem­o­ries, her life lived, suf­fered and survived.

Screen­writer and direc­tor Zeina Dur­ra plays her cards very close to her chest. We learn that Hana is a doc­tor, one who spent hap­pi­er times in Lux­or dur­ing her twen­ties, but lit­tle else beyond frag­ments of con­ver­sa­tion that sug­gest she’s since been in close prox­im­i­ty to war. As she is reac­quaint­ed with her past love, archae­ol­o­gist Sul­tan (Karim Saleh), her sto­ic veneer starts to crack. Like the pot­tery Sul­tan uncov­ers and exam­ines so dear­ly, Hana is the only arti­fact the view­er can use to sur­mise her story.

The chem­istry between Rise­bor­ough and Saleh is exquis­ite, a bal­ance of respect, deep mutu­al knowl­edge, and del­i­cate affec­tion that comes through in the mod­est script and the sen­si­tive phys­i­cal­i­ty of their per­for­mances. He has a pro­found appre­ci­a­tion of the past, not just at the dig, but of more recent cre­ations, enter­tain­ing him­self with old phones and fax machines while mourn­ing the ren­o­va­tion of the run­down hotel.

The longer she spends with Sul­tan and his infec­tious nos­tal­gia, the more of her iden­ti­ty comes to light. The pair’s scenes togeth­er are com­fort­able, break­ing through the iso­la­tion of the first act, and con­fronta­tion­al, as they ground the ephemer­al, ethe­re­al atmos­phere to face the prospect of an uncer­tain future. A tug-of-war between ratio­nal­i­ty and super­sti­tion reigns over the film, as Hana vac­il­lates between jad­ed cyn­i­cism and a ten­ta­tive, mature curios­i­ty. As Asmatan’s melo­dra­mat­ic bal­lad ​“Ya Habibi Taala” clos­es the sto­ry, Hana suc­cumbs to her pas­sion and to a hope fuelled by an unde­fined but over­pow­er­ing sense of spirituality.

The third act is where the inten­si­ty height­ens but, with­out even a glimpse from flash­backs or a more reveal­ing mono­logue, there isn’t quite enough to jus­ti­fy its big emo­tion­al moments. It’s hard to ful­ly grasp the extent of Hana’s dark past in order to appre­ci­ate her mov­ing on. The way Rise­bor­ough cul­ti­vates a sense of mys­tery is riv­et­ing, and hints at more to be learned, but aside from the unique per­son­al­i­ty of Lux­or, the sto­ry is miss­ing a lit­tle more weight. Though stun­ning and evoca­tive, with­out per­son­al con­text, the film floats away on its res­o­lu­tion with­out enough detail to make it more distinctive.